A girl on a railway station who croons Lata Mangeshkar songs with aching
luminosity, a stoic gluttonous ostrich, a flirty cocky gay
entertainment journalist, a closet actor, a little boy who likes to
dance like Katrina Kaif and a man from Allahabad who just wants to meet
Amitabh Bachchan for a few seconds... Such are the engrossing characters
that populate the unforgettable world of Bombay Talkies. Such are
dreams celluloid dramas are woven of.

So how is it that we rarely ever get to feel so good about the movie-viewing experience?

Bombay Talkies is that rarity which makes us thankful for the gift of
the movies. What would life be without the stolen pleasures in the
darkened auditorium where life's truest notions are melted own to emerge
in moving images that have defined lives for generations in one way or
another.

Four stories directed by four of the most important contemporary
Bollywood directors emerge and merge with seamless splendour into a
pastiche of pain and pleasure.

Like four scoops of icecream, one
yummier than the other, Bombay Talkies serves up a flavourful quartet
of delights that leave us craving for more. It's like that song written
by the immortal Sahir Ludhianvi. Abhi na jao chhod kar ke dil abhi bhara
nahin.

No, that song isn't part of the film. But there are songs of the melody
queen Lataji which haunt your senses as the restless edgy protagonists,
each in search of an emotional liberation that strikes them in
unexpected ways at the end of every story, seek a slice of cloudburst to
nourish their parched spirits.

So on to the first and my favourite story directed by Karan Johar where a
sterile marriage between an urban working-couple played by Rani
Mukherjee and Randeep Hooda is shaken by the arrival of young ebullient
homosexual who enters couple's frozen marriage in a most unexpected way.

This story more than any other, pushes Indian cinema to the edge to
explore a theme and emotions that have so far been swept under the
carpet by those who decide what audiences should and should not be given
to experience.

Johar whose most brilliant film My Name Is Khan
was also about a marginalized community, strips the urban relationship
of all its shock value.

He looks at the three characters'
frightening spiritual emptiness with a dispassion that was denied to the
characters in Johar's earlier exploration of crumbling marital values
in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna.

Thanks to the unsparing editing (Deepa Bhatia), a gently arousing
background score (Hitesh Sonik), deft but credible dialogues (Niranjan
Iyenger) and camerawork by Anil Mehta that sweeps gently across three
wounded lives, Johar is able to nail the poignancy and the irony of his
urban fable in just 4-5 key scenes.

This is his best work to
date. While Rani delivers another power-packed performance (and she
looks gorgeous too) Hooda needs to get rid of that trademark scowl.

It's Saqib Saleem who steals this segment with his unmitigated spontaneity and reined-in ebullience.

The second story directed by Dibakar Bannerjee features that wonderful
chameleon actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a man who would have been an
actor if only life's drudgeries had not overtaken his life. Dibakar is a
master-creator of vignettes from everyday life.

The sequence where Siddiqui washes clothes with the chawl's women is
savagely funny and poignant, as is his life-changing moment when Nawaz
gets to perform one shot with Ranbir Kapoor.

No we don't see
Ranbir, we just FEEL his presence, and we also HEAR filmmaker Reema
Kagti giving orders from the directorial chair but we don't see her.

Nawaz in Dibakar's deft hands, takes his character through a journey of
profoundly saddening self-discovery without any hint of self-pity. This
segment is quirky funny and tragic.

Nawaz's dialogue with his
mentor (played by Sadashiv Amrapurkar) on acting and dreams is written
in a caustic ironic tone where the element of tragedy is sublimated with
tenderness and subtlety. No one is allowed to feel sorry for Nawaz's
character. Not even Nawaz.

Ebullient and enchanting are the descriptions that come to mind while
watching Zoya Akhtar's film about a little boy (Naman Jain, brilliant)
who would rather dance to Katrina Kaif's song than become a cricketer or
a pilot, as per tyrant papa (Ranveer Shorey)'s wishes.

Shades
of Ronit Roy from Vikramaditya Motwane's Udaan in Shorey's character do
not take away from the stimulating freshness of Zoya's treatment.

The household brims over with song, dance and giggles between the
Kaif-enamoured boy and his sibling and confidante (a very confident
Khushi Dubey). Charming warm humorous and vivacious Zoya's film serves
up a very gentle moral lesson.

Let a child grow the way it wants to. Zoya's film makes our hearts acquire wings. And yes, it immortalizes Katrina Kaif.

Finally Anurag Kashyap's homage to the unmatchable stardom of Amitabh
Bachchan. A simple fable of a man journeying from Allahabad to meet the
super-iconic Bachchan this segment of the story is more baggy and
loose-limbed than the other three tightly-edited stories. This is not to
take away from its power.

As played by Vineet Kumar Singh the
Common Man's devotion to the Bachchan aura is manifested in the
tongue-in-cheek spoken lines and the casual energy of Mumbai's street
life.

Kashyap captures the sometimes-funny often-sad bustle
around the Bachchan bungalow with warmth and affection. This segment
certainly doesn't lack in warmth. But it could have done with a tighter
grip over the narrative.

Long after each story ends we are left wondering what would happen to
the vividly written characters. No, that's not a good thing in this
case. For the story after the first, and then one after that , require
our undivided attention.

Bombay Talkies is segmented and layered, yet cohesive and compelling
from the first frame to the last. While unraveling the magic of cinema
and its impact on the minds of audiences Bombay Talkies also displays
how much cinema has evolved over the generations.

This is a
beguiling, beautiful and befitting homage to a 100 years of cinema. It's
also proof that different stories in an episodic film could comfortably
have directors with different sensitivities staring in the same line of
vision.

If you watch only one film a year make sure it's this one. Yup, thank God for the motion picture.